The Student's Romance

Patrick Knowles is a poor student at Heidelberg University. He meets and falls in love with Grete Natzler, an incognito princess, and she with him. However, she is to be engaged to a prince, and he is so poor that Carol Goodner, the friendly barmaid at the gasthaus who admires his songwriting pays his bills. This outrages him, and the efforts of his friend, Mackenzie Ward, to come up with the money to pay the debt and to court Miss Goodner, makes up a major subplot, along with a cow.

It's from an operetta called "I Lost My Heart in Heidelberg". Looking back almost nine decades, it's hard to imagine how popular these films were; this received a nomination for "Best Foreign Picture" at the Venice Film Festival. Yet in many ways, the American College Musical -- another outdated form --clearly owes its origins to this sort of stage and screen romance.

Although there's nothing of any particular note here -- the songs are good, without being memorable -- it's a well executed example of the form, with good acting and staging.

Set in Heidelberg Univesity in 1825, this is one of the old style of black and white movie where everyone speaks English despite being set in a foreign country (in this case, Germany) and with lush period detail. The movie is a pleasing good-natured comedy, disarmingly silly and with a lot of lively scenes. Most of the action surrounds Karl Reuter (Mackenzie Ward), a youngish man and perpetual university student ("he's been trying to get though medicine for ten years") who wanders through every scene with a knowing drollness. For example, in an early scene, he helps a friend temporarily escape the authorities. One of the pursuers, an old man, then shouts "You've made fools of us!". With a smug smile, Karl replies under his breath "well, the material was there to work on..." Ha! He's also the life of the party. Much of the plot involves love triangles, authority figures, and such, but really the point of the movie is to be funny and musical (e.g. There's two goofy cops who wander in and out of scenes, hoping to be able to find a "case"). I particularly liked the performance of Carol Goodner who played the bar maid Veronika. Her performance is just so authentic and vivacious. When she laughs, it seems that she is laughing for real. This film is full of good performances (it reminds you of how there were so many good actors in days gone past, even when their names are unknown nowadays). Fans of Laurel and Hardy might recognise Grete Natzler, who played the love interest in Swiss Miss. Here, she's a love interest and princess in disguise. Overall, this was great fun to watch and holds up in a second viewing where you can catch many details and subtle facial expressions that you may have missed the first time (indeed, I raised my score slightly when re-watching it).